Silvana Annicchiarico, the Director of the Triennale Design Museum, invited Roberto Sironi to design and produce an edition of 7 + 1AP prizes for the first edition of “Premio Imprenditore 4.0”.The prize is designed to enhance those companies that develop business models based on technology 4.0 such as advanced and additive manufacturing, robotics, internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data analysis and in general the most innovative manufacturing techniques.

Roberto Sironi designs the prize as a sculpture that reflects on the role of technology in the current historical framework. ERA is conceived as the encounter of two technologies which come from two different historical periods; they are both “Tools” which man uses to build its future. The chipped-flint, a technology developed by humans in the Paleolithic age, is in relationship with a perforated copper board used for the production of electronic circuits – one of the most recent technologies and one of the symbols of the current Electronic and Information age.Both artifacts are made through materials and techniques that also represent the two opposites of manufacturing production: the chipped-flint is in white bronze produced through lost wax casting, a technique introduced by man more than 5000 years ago, while the perforated copper board is made by electroforming, a recent industrial production technique.

The original chipped-flint was sculpted in wax by Roberto Sironi, who states “I was curious to know if inside me there was a historical memory compared to the chipping of the flint, the imprint of a man-made activity consecutively made for thousands of years. I think that it was there”.